Chen Haiyu, a year-5 overseas Chinese student in Clinical Medicine, published the paper Extended Reality (XR) and Telehealth Interventions for Children or Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Systematic Review of Qualitative and Quantitative Studies in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, one of the top journals in neuroscience with an impact factor of 10.818 in the last five years.  

Aiming to verify the efficacy and validity of XR and Telehealth interventions for children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the paper reviews 112 studies from databases of PubMed, Web of Science and Cochrane Library, published in English between January 2010 to April 1st, 2022. It is found that after interventions, positive improvements for ASD participants were observed in social interaction, acceptance, and engagement, communication and speech, emotion recognition and control, daily living skill, problem behavior reduction, attention, cost reduction, anxiety symptom reduction, pretend play, contextual processing, match to sample skill, and insomnia control. The findings provide a solid and positive evidence of XR and Telehealth interventions in improving the treatment outcomes for children and adolescents with ASD. The paper proposes that in the future, more research with RCTs and standardized outcome measurements are required to establish the therapeutic efficiency of the two interventions independently or combined.

Chen Haiyu, the first author of the paper, said he was much surprised when he was informed of the publication by his academic tutor Dr. Xiong Peng, associate professor in public health and preventive medicine, who is also the correspondent author of the paper. “I feel deeply indebted to the unselfish guidance of Dr. Peng and the supports and collaboration of my research teammates. I feel so lucky that I joined JNU and chose the International School. The university equips us with a wealth of word-wide databases and abundant academic resources, while the school provides an ideal environment for the pursuit of academic and research excellence,” said Chen Haiyu.   

Middle front: Dr. Xiong Peng, first left: Chen Yuhan     

As a student-oriented institution, the International School has implemented the Academic Mentorship Scheme since 2019, in order to foster a close tie between the students and the faculty members in all undergraduate programs. This publication is the latest manifestation of its success.